


The Road Not Taken

by Craftnarok



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: 1848 Search Expedition!AU, Developing Relationship, First Kiss, Frottage, James Clark Ross shows up too but only a little, Jopson cares for Little, Little and Jopson live, Little cares for Jopson, M/M, Mild Angst, Oh and Also, Shaving, and some period typical use of the word 'eskimo', slight fudging of show timeline - JCR talks to the sexy Inuit man in 1849 instead of 1850, snapshots and time jumps, sorry - Freeform, the rest of Franklin's expedition still don't make it out, vaguely paranormal spooky dreams
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:21:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26820553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Craftnarok/pseuds/Craftnarok
Summary: In 1845, as Terror and Erebus left Greenland to cross Baffin Bay, Edward Little was invalided home on their last escort ship. Three years later, when Sir James Clark Ross leads the first of the search expeditions, Little leaps at the chance to join the hunt for his lost colleagues. Plagued by strange and haunting dreams that only worsen with every passing mile, there is a growing comfort to be found in an unexpected connection with his steward, Thomas Jopson.
Relationships: Thomas Jopson/Lt Edward Little
Comments: 13
Kudos: 29
Collections: The Joplittle Fall Fic Exchange 2020





	The Road Not Taken

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nordhumbrensian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nordhumbrensian/gifts).



> I'm so excited to have something to share with the Terror fandom, finally. This one really got away with me, but I loved the prompt so much I just had to pick it. Nordhumbrensian, I really hope you like it!

**_Journal of Lt. Edward Little, H.M.S. Enterprise_ **

**_Friday 30th June 1848 - 69°_ ** **_00’ N, 53°_ ** **_22’ W_ **

**_‘Departed Whale Fish Islands late in the PM, with a fair wind behind us. Various scientific observations taken in the week prior to departure - magnetic readings, sounding, etc - along with minor repairs and general ships maintenance. The temperature remains exceedingly low, despite the time of year, which raises several questions we are not yet equipped to answer. Nevertheless, there remains much enthusiasm amongst the crew for the search ahead.’_ **

*

They were a month out of Greenhithe when Little understood that he wouldn’t be returning to England as the same man who’d left. The version of himself who had set foot on the  _ Enterprise _ in London belonged to a different life and, whatever they found in the ice, the next time he laid his boots on English soil he would be someone else. He had known, of course, what he was signing up for - had requested this post with far more than the double pay in mind - but the weight of their purpose, and the depth of feeling that propelled it, took all the way to Greenland to sink in.

He had followed the news of _Erebus_ and _Terror’s_ progress as closely as he could in the weeks following his return to England, but there was only so much he could glean from conversations with officers who knew captains who knew admirals who cared to know very little. But as the expedition’s silence grew, and the implications with it, one didn’t need to go climbing the grapevine to hear the rumours trickling down. Sir James Ross would be leading the search effort, backed by the Lady Franklin herself, and it was as easy as opening his mouth to land himself a position aboard. In truth, he was surprised by how easy it was; given his abrupt departure from the very expedition they were set to go hunting, he had expected questions about his fitness at the very least, but it seemed the swell of public opinion and the threat of a fourth overwinter in the ice necessitated certain streamlining shortcuts. 

Whether he would have told them about the dreams, if they’d thought to question his state of mind, he really couldn’t say. It wasn’t a typical line of enquiry in any medical examination he’d undergone before, but sailing off the edge of the map could have some atypical effects on men. Or so he’d heard. Greenland was hardly uncharted waters and he’d made it no further than that before his unidentified but apparently ominous illness had seen him and three other men invalided back to England. Within a week he was recovered, evidently not the consumptive plague rat that Sir John had feared, but almost nightly since he had been plagued by strange and unsettling dreams. His subconscious mind working through an extensive ‘what if?’ scenario, no doubt, but where he had first only woken shivering and disorientated he now dreamt of being pursued by some great unknowable thing, trapped in wide open spaces, vistas so enormous they gave him vertigo, and he would jolt awake with his heart thundering and a sheen of sweat on his skin. He often wondered whether those other three men were subject to the same vivid imaginings, but it was hardly the sort of question one could pose as a Lieutenant to a mate you’d crewed up with for all of two months. 

Little dropped into wakefulness from just such a dream at the sound of knuckles rapping on his cabin door. His gaze roved wildly around the room for several long seconds as he struggled to place himself within the world, and it was the sight of Jopson’s face appearing in the doorway, rather than Gibson’s, that cleared the lingering haze of his dream. 

“Sir? Captain Ross has requested your presence in his cabin as soon as is convenient.”

Little scrubbed a hand across his eyes, resisting the urge to scratch at the morning stubble on his chin. Even in that drowsy state of first waking he knew better than to scratch at himself like a flea bitten dog. “What time is it?” he mumbled.

“A little before six, sir.” 

Jopson looked remarkably bright-eyed for such an early hour, but perhaps that was simply a permanent feature of his face. It had taken Little all of ten minutes aboard  _ Enterprise _ to find himself stumbling over his own words, struck stupid at their first introduction by those bright, watchful eyes that were a colour he still couldn’t put a name to. 

Jopson slid a cup of tea onto the narrow desk, and Little dragged himself out from under the covers as he bustled around the tiny space setting Little’s uniform out and laying his open razor on a clean towel. 

By any normal standards the officers’ cabins were claustrophobic burrows, but to have one’s own private space on a ship was such a luxury that to Little it felt positively palatial. Generally speaking. With two men filling up the room, alongside Little’s towering self-consciousness about his state of undress in Jopson’s presence, its true dimensions were suddenly painfully apparent. It wasn’t an issue he’d had with Gibson, despite the fact that he had loomed over Little to an almost comical degree. With him there had always been an air of genuine disinterest that made Little’s various discomforts rather a lot easier to navigate. With Jopson, whether it was real or imagined, behind the scrupulously professional disinterest there was a sense of being constantly, incisively, weighed and measured, and Little was brewing up a steadily mounting dread that he was going to be found wanting. All stewards seemed to have that shrewdness about them - more or less unsettling depending on the man - but Jopson’s had a physical weight to it that landed squarely on Little’s chest whenever they made eye contact. It was all he could do to remember his father’s endless refrain that watching his feet when he spoke made him look like he had something to hide, and so he forced himself to hold that pale and steady gaze no matter how it squeezed the breath from his lungs. 

“Did the captain say what he wanted to speak about?” he asked, more for the sake of breaking the silence than out of expectation of a useful answer.

“Something to do with our heading beyond Sanderson’s Hope, sir. If I’m not mistaken,” Jopson said. 

Little hummed his acknowledgement. He had a feeling that Jopson was rarely mistaken about what was occupying the minds of the officers and captains he served, but it wouldn’t do to comment on it. Not if Little wanted to keep that useful well of advanced notice open to him, at any rate. 

“It seems that news of the state of the ice is causing some debate over the most likely course taken by Captain Crozier,” Jopson added. “That is, Captains Franklin and Crozier.” 

The amendment was quick and subtle, but Little noticed it all the same. There was an implication of familiarity there that immediately piqued his curiosity. As he shrugged into his shirt, he tried to find the right way to ask what he was wondering, but before he could manage it Jopson ran out of imaginary messes to neaten and laid his hand on the door.

“Can I do anything more for you, sir?” he said.

Several vivid but decidedly unhelpful suggestions popped into Little’s mind, but he brushed them aside with a shake of his head. “No. Thank you, Jopson.”

Jopson slid out of the cabin through an impressively narrow gap in the door, a bit of fluid grace that served to keep Little’s half-dressed form hidden from anyone who might be passing. He could count on one hand the names of the men who were permitted to be this far astern, but it was a thoughtful consideration for his modesty all the same. 

Once alone, Little shaved as quickly as he dared, finished dressing, and downed his lukewarm tea in one long gulp, all the while pondering over Jopson’s slip of the tongue. Little hadn’t had much reason to take notice of Crozier’s steward, Mr Genge, in his short time with the expedition, but with hindsight he could build the impression that their relationship was not a longstanding one. There were certain unconscious gestures of trust and relaxations of deference that marked out captains and stewards who made a habit of sailing together, and he had no memory of that kind of warmth or understanding between them _. _ What such relaxations would look like with Jopson he could only hope to learn.

The door to the captain’s cabin was open when Little arrived, but he knocked on the frame and waited for an invitation to enter all the same. Captain Ross was leaning over his table, which was strewn with maps and charts. Mr Abernethy, the Ice Master, stood opposite him, a frown fixed on his face and so deep in thought that it took him several long seconds to notice Little had entered the room and to acknowledge him with a nod as Ross greeted him. Beside Mr Abernethy stood a man Little did not recognise. Not one of their own crew, quite obviously, his civilian garb well-worn and with the appearance of never having been dry since the day it was first worn. If that alone did not mark him down as a whaler, the rank smell of smoke and rendered blubber that emanated from him most assuredly did. Little nodded to him as politely as he was able, waiting for Ross to make an introduction.

“Lieutenant Little, this is Captain Gilpin of the  _ Alexander _ . We spotted them to the south of us about an hour ago and hailed them. They’ve been whaling off Cape York but the news they bring about the state of the ice is concerning at best. Captain Gilpin, if you would?” he prompted, turning his attention back to the charts on the table.

Gilpin cleared his throat, thrusting his hands deep into the pockets of his slick overalls. “Aye, well, we’ve been out of Dundee some eighteen months now, having a devil of a time harvesting enough whale to fill the hold.” He had the clipped, melodious accent of a Shetlander and it took Little a confusing moment to attune his ear to it. “We’ve seen the tail-end of one long winter, skirted further south to avoid the worst of another, and by all accounts the year before was a hard one as well. We’ve been back and fore the coast a dozen times and we’ve seen no sign of your men, but there’s been not much sign of anything except old ice blocking the ways north and the look of another nasty winter to come.”

Mr Abernethy was nodding along as Captain Gilpin spoke, the look of uneasy contemplation still stitched tightly to the lines in his face. 

With a small start, Little realised Jopson had entered the room behind him, his steps whisper-quiet even with a fully laden tray in his hands. He was moving around the edges of the room, bustling with little tasks unobtrusively enough to go almost unnoticed. Almost. Little watched him out of the corner of his eye as Mr Abernethy asked Captain Gilpin some impenetrably obscure question about the nature of the ice; he watched the way Jopson’s head cocked subtly towards the conversation he was expected to ignore, watched how his smooth and convincing show of unconcern faltered as Ross said quietly,  _ “Francis wouldn’t have ignored signs like those.”  _ Where some stewards gave the impression of eavesdropping for curiosity’s sake, however, Jopson’s attention was more focused than that. He had the look of a man clinging to nervous hope.

Little jumped slightly as Ross turned his attention back to him, his gaze penetrating. “I know we’ve spoken of it before, Lieutenant, but in light of this information I wanted to ask you again whether you recall Sir John or Captain Crozier considering any change in course to account for the ice?”

He wished he had some key, some vital clue that would lead them in the right direction, but there was nothing. He shook his head. 

“The last command meeting I attended was before we’d even rounded Cape Farewell and all looked sound and seasonable. Our progress was swift, the crews were faring well, and our attention was on Greenland. I don’t believe ice ever entered the discussion as a pressing concern.”

Ross sighed in frustration, drawing the palm of his hand down the length of Peel Sound on the map. Behind him, Jopson had turned his attention to pouring tea, but as he handed around the cups he gave Little a curious once over. It gave him the impression that he was being openly reassessed and neatly filed away in some new category in Jopson’s mind. He wasn’t certain he enjoyed the sensation. What he was almost certain of, however, was that Jopson’s motivations for being here were something akin to his own and to Ross’s, though he would never presume to speak for the captain. They were all three of them compelled by far more than money or fame or the prospect of the kind of stories one could dine out on for a lifetime. They were members of a very small, very tight-lipped little club: the men driven north by a duty of care.

Ross asked Mr Abernethy to escort Captain Gilpin back on deck and then he turned to look at Jopson. “Give us the room please,” he said. 

If Jopson had been attempting invisibility, he gave no outward sign that he was surprised to be noticed by Ross. With a murmur of  _ ‘Sir’ _ he left the room, closing the door behind him.

“I’ll be travelling over to  _ Intrepid _ to speak with Captain Bird shortly, but for now my plan remains the same. When we enter Lancaster Sound, the ships will split up. We will hug the northern shore, Captain Bird the southern, and we will maintain signal fires and regular cannonfire to draw the attention of any Eskimo in the vicinity. I’d like you to run the men through their paces with the guns this afternoon and draw up additional watch lists. How much we can accomplish before winter arrives only time will tell, but I trust that you can oversee this task?”

“Yes, sir.”

Leaving the room and sliding the door to behind him, Little caught a glimpse of Jopson’s back retreating into the wardroom. He’d heard it said that gossip and rumour were as integral to a crew as was rigging to sails; they were the grease that oiled the machine. It was all but a prerogative for stewards to overhear whatever they could, and given his suspicions he didn’t blame Jopson a whit for wanting to know the details of their plan. It wasn’t easy to begrudge any of the men their curiosity, not with a mission as pressing as theirs. 

* * *

**_Friday 1st September 1848 - 74°44’ N, 86°41 W:_ **

**_‘We continue to scour the north shore of Lancaster Sound, as_ ** **Investigator** **_takes the south. No sign yet of anything of note; no flotsam or jetsam, no markers or cairns, and no people either native or our own. Still, our search has barely begun and with our fires lit and the guns firing in the fog we could not do much to make ourselves more conspicuous.’_ **

*

Standing on watch, close to the lonely heat of their signal fires, Little shivered as though someone had walked over his grave. For almost two weeks they had kept constant vigil, their bright lights and the thundering peals of their guns washing across the sound like a rolling storm. They were trying to catch the attention of any native people who might be able to offer them clues in their search, but Little didn’t think he was alone in his secret hope that by some wild, unlikely chance they might be spotted by one of their lost colleagues.  They had passed the height of summer when the sun looped and danced above the horizon refusing to set, but still the nights barely warranted their name. The pale blue twilight cast an eerie glow on the fog settled around them like soup, and their own lights only added to the effect. There was something hellish about the look of it, Little thought. No, not hellish. Purgatorial. As if they were lost themselves, doomed to wander forever through no-man’s-land, invisible to the world and the men that they desperately sought. 

Or perhaps his imagination was running away with him. He blamed the strange atmosphere and his unsettling dreams in equal measure. He was still plagued by haunting images as he slept, but their frequency had decreased as the summer wore on. Given the choice between the dreams and the emerging deja-vu, however, he would have been content to deal with an overactive mind that confined itself to his bed. The first time he laid eyes on Bylot Island, the vivid recollection that he’d been there before made the bottom drop out of his stomach. There was no logical basis to the thought, nor even anything so distinguishing about the vista that he could say he was conflating it with some other place, but with each day that passed he swore the horizon grew more and more familiar to him, and with that certainty came a dizzying feeling of disorientation.  Alongside that disconcerting development was a healthy dose of guilt at his determination to appear fine and well. Concealing illness was a rare brand of machismo that was not encouraged within the Discovery Service, but Little was sure enough that the twist in his gut stemmed from the doubts in his mind that he could convince himself he wasn’t endangering the crew by remaining silent. Though, he had experience enough to know that a mind run to dark and strange places could infect a crew just as readily as a body racked by disease. 

A particularly bracing gust of wind snapped him back into the present and he fished around for his pocket watch to check the time. Just gone 10pm, if it was to be believed, but he suspected the mechanism was growing sluggish and stiff in the cold. He sympathised. Stamping his feet, he paced along the rail squinting out towards the shore. He thought he could make it out, just, but perhaps he was only conjuring what he wanted to see. He jumped slightly as a figure materialised beside him, turning to find Jopson staring out in the direction he had been looking. Conjuring what he wanted to see indeed.

“Any luck, sir?”

Little shook his head. “Unless someone out there takes the trouble to build a pyre, I doubt we’ll see anyone in this weather even if they see us.”

“It’s a real pea-souper,” Jopson agreed. He held out a tumbler in Little’s direction, which he accepted with a grateful murmur of thanks. The nip of gin burned his throat as it went down, but he welcomed the warmth that diffused out from his chest in its wake. 

“Lieutenant Robinson asked me to check whether you needed anything more this evening.”

Little passed the tumbler back, torn between relief and regret that his gloves kept him from touching Jopson’s skin as their fingers brushed together. He cleared his throat. “A clear view of the stars would be nice, and perhaps a warm breeze, though I don’t think those quite fall under your purview?” he said. 

Jopson huffed a quiet laugh. “Not generally, sir, but I’ll see what I can do.”

He lingered at Little’s elbow, apparently quite content to stand staring out into the fog as though they were admiring a picturesque scene together. 

“I confess I never paid much mind to the stars before I learnt you could navigate by them and they became useful to me,” Jopson said. “Does that make me a philistine, sir?”

“Probably.” 

Little hadn’t meant it to sound rude, but as soon as the word escaped his lips he wished he could reconsider it.

Jopson laughed again, turning to face him in surprise. “I appreciate your honesty. I think.”

“Perhaps ‘practical’ would be a better descriptor?” Little ventured. “Unless you’re planning on retiring from the sea to write poetry for pennies then I suppose there’s little use in knowing the stories behind the constellations.”

“No such plans, no. Do you have a favourite?”

“A favourite story or a favourite constellation?”

Jopson smiled, his cheeks dimpling and the corners of his eyes crinkling with it, and Little was almost winded by the swell of affection that swept through him. 

“See, I must be a philistine, sir, because I hadn’t even considered that they might be two separate things. Now I need to know both.”

A bright spark of panic flared in Little’s mind as he scrambled to recall any one of the thousands of stories he knew and loved. They might as well have stepped out of his memory and into the fog for all the luck he was having in finding them. He took a deep breath and looked up at the too-bright sky for inspiration. Jopson remained silent, his patience soothing as Little pictured Polaris above them and constructed the night sky around it. Light by light, they came back to him.

“I love so many of the stories, but I always loved Castor and Pollux especially. Gemini. They were Argonauts, twin brothers of Helen of Troy, and the patrons of sailors. When mortal Castor died in his arms, Pollux’s father, Zeus, allowed him to share his immortality with his brother and they were reunited in the heavens. I never did see the appeal of immortality, but I suppose if it was shared then it wouldn’t seem so long.”

“I suppose it wouldn’t,” Jopson agreed. “But Gemini’s not your favourite constellation?”

“No, that’s Taurus, but only because it contains the Pleiades.”

Jopson looked nonplussed.

“They’re the Seven Sisters. I come from rather a large family and when I was a scrawny midshipman learning about the constellations it made me feel closer to home if I could find my sisters in the sky.” 

He hoped the flush he could feel blossoming along his neck was hidden by his scarf, or at least that Jopson might attribute it to the cold. 

“I wish the sky was dark and clear as well,” Jopson murmured, “so you could show them to me.” 

Little could see Jopson watching him out of the corner of his eye and his stomach fluttered with butterflies as he dared to turn and look back. Standing in such close and quiet companionship, he could almost consider Jopson a friend. It wasn’t appropriate to their ranks, strictly speaking, but when comfort was hard to come by Little was loath to reduce what crumbs he found to bare duty. It was all too easy to allow himself to see open affection in Jopson’s gaze, still levelled at him without a hint of self-consciousness. He might have been able to convince himself otherwise, in time, if the approach of an AB didn’t cause Jopson to disappear back into the fog as though he had almost been caught sneaking out of bounds.

*

That night, Little dreamed that he was dead. Under a bleached and blinding sky he walked and walked and watched the horizon reel away from him as he reached out to grasp it. His boots long lost, he stumbled barefoot over the detritus of lives and deaths, too afraid to look at what was cracking beneath his heels and mulching up between his toes. He didn’t need to look to see. Before him and behind him and beneath him the groaning whisper of the ice said he shouldn’t be here, didn’t belong here, but there was no way of leaving now he’d forced this path. If he lay down, when he lay down, he wouldn’t get up again, and his soul would sit inside his body as his skin shrank and his eyes sank and his bones crumbled into poisonous dust. 

He woke up gasping, clawing at the walls of his bed in a blind panic as he fought to remember where he was. With shaking hands he lit a candle, counting his breaths as he focused on the rolling tilt of gravity that proved the ship was still afloat. They weren’t trapped yet. 

A shiver ran through him as the sheen of sweat on his skin hit the cool air. The furnace kept temperatures below deck above freezing, which he supposed was a kind of luxury he ought to appreciate, but without at least two layers of clothing or covers the chill would still creep in. He pulled off his damp sleepshirt, scrubbing it across his body to dry himself off, and then he clambered back onto his bed, his knees to his chest and his blankets wound round him like a thick cocoon. What time it was he could not say. His pocket watch was on the far edge of his desk and laying eyes on it he decided that he wouldn’t snake a hand back out into the cold for all the tea in China. Staring at it didn’t seem to be moving it any closer through force of will, or imparting any psychic knowledge of what the softly ticking hands might read, and so he sighed and contented himself with the weight of another little mystery in his life. 

The ship was quiet, so it must be early, but the faint orange glow seeping in through the slats in his door implied that he was not the only man below decks who was awake. That was some kind of comfort, at least. The dream had rattled him more than any he’d had in weeks, the horror of desolation still prickling under his skin. He didn’t like to look too hard at those feelings, as though they were somehow telling of a greater truth he wasn’t ready to know, but the more tired he grew the more difficult they were to ignore. 

He was beginning to wonder if it had been a mistake to come here. It had been an obvious choice from the safety of home, where the piecemeal unravelling of his mind had not been listed among the costs, but his resolve was starting to fray. It had the feeling of a slowly approaching catastrophe, like a broken ice shelf looming in the dark. There was no way out now, no way forward but to see it through. He would really rather do it with his faculties intact, and for that he needed sleep.

He was dozing with his temple against his knee when a knock at his door made him jerk awake. His neck twinged as he lifted his head and grunted his acknowledgement to the man in the corridor. A hand slid the door open gingerly, and Jopson peered in, his brow furrowed. Little didn’t blame him for his reticence; his invitation had been less English and more feral creature, but he did feel distinctly inhuman in his makeshift nest, bleary with tiredness. 

“Is everything alright, sir?” Jopson said, taking in the sight of his slumped form. 

He made no effort to straighten his spine. He couldn’t dredge up the energy and, frankly, he was certain Jopson must have seen worse. 

“I didn’t get much sleep,” he said, his voice a hoarse whisper. “It’s...it’s difficult with the fires going.” He gestured vaguely upwards towards the deck above their heads. The fact that his cabin was windowless made the statement patently absurd, but Jopson nodded as though it made perfect sense.

“They’ve set the whole crew on edge, I think,” he said, stepping into the room and closing the door behind him. “Makes it feel as though you might miss some vital clue if you close your eyes for too long, even when other men are on watch.”

Little felt guilty for lying, but there was a power in words that he wasn’t ready to breathe into his dreams. To give them life outside his head would make them real, and that seemed like a dangerous idea indeed. But Jopson’s reasoning was sound too, and it was an explanation for his state that he was happy to echo. 

“Yes, precisely that.”

Jopson placed a cup of tea on his desk - how had Little survived before this man and his endless supply of comforting drinks? - and picked up the sleep shirt that lay wadded on the floor. Little winced in embarrassment at his slovenliness.

“Sorry,” he said.

Jopson looked him over, keen eyes assessing Little’s discomfort. “It is my job, sir,” he said, with a patient smile.

Little scrubbed at his itching jaw with the blanket, too tired to care overmuch about the way it looked, and tipped his head back to rest against the wall. “And it’s my job to be orderly and disciplined, not a ship’s boy who doesn’t yet know how to pick up after himself.”

“I’ve served officers who weren’t even aware of that, so you really needn’t worry. I’ll wash this and have it back to you by tonight.” He placed the shirt on the end of the bed, neatly folded as though it wasn't a sodden rag. 

Little remained tucked up in his corner while Jopson laid out his uniform, his quiet company slowly washing away the vivid images that Little wanted to forget, placing him in the present where he was alive and well and knew his precise location in the world. He wondered how Jopson slept here. He had never seen him anything less than energised and efficient, no matter how early the hour, or how late. But if Little was correct in his assumption that Jopson was here for similar reasons as he, then he had to feel the weight of that burden just as heavily.

“Do you enjoy your work?” he said, as Jopson laid his razor out perfectly perpendicular to the edge of his desk. 

“I do,” Jopson nodded.

“Even when serving officers who behave like unruly ship’s boys?”

Jopson grinned at him, a flash of teeth and dimples that made his breath catch. “Even then. But I’ve been fortunate to serve good men who didn’t make the job difficult, for the most part.”

“Like Captain Crozier?” Little said, finally allowing his curiosity to get the better of him.

Jopson pressed his lips together, leaning against the wall with his hands behind his back. It was an uncharacteristic show of relaxation that didn’t quite hit its mark. He nodded slowly. 

“Yes.”

“When did you serve with him?” 

“In Antartica, from ‘39. I was supposed to join this expedition as well - that is, Captain Crozier requested it - but there were certain obstacles that made it impossible.”

The word ‘obstacles’ was a simple one, but Little suspected that it contained many large and complicated things that he didn’t feel entitled to ask about. Not yet, at any rate. Though their conversation the previous night had marked a subtle shift towards something warm and friendly, the dregs of his night time fear still clung to Little and it made him second guess himself.

“You were supposed to go to the Arctic as well,” Jopson said. It wasn’t a question, but there were a hundred unspoken queries in his tone. 

“I was. Technically I did. Only I was packed off home before I had the chance to do much of anything other than cross the Arctic Circle and catch a chill.”

There was a bitterness to his voice that he hadn’t quite expected, especially given the shameful current of relief that ran through him every time he woke up and remembered that he wasn’t one of the missing men suffering god only knows what sort of trials. Jopson was scrutinising his expression, taking his attitude and implications apart piece by piece, and in a rush of daring Little wondered why he was even bothering trying to shut him out.

“It’s a strange feeling, is it not,” he ventured, “seeing the alternate path your life might have taken if only the smallest of things had been different? Feeling as though you might have skirted disaster through chance.”

Still silent, Jopson reached out and put his hand under Little’s elbow, nudging him towards the edge of the bed. Little held his breath as Jopson began to lather soap and brush it over his chin, his movements practised and easy: entirely professional but inescapably intimate. 

“It is strange,” he said, finally. “Like a haunting, of sorts. Or some other preternatural thing.”

Little watched as Jopson picked up his razor and wetted it in the wash basin, flicking the excess droplets off with a sharp twist of his wrist. 

“Have you heard of Bessie Miller?” Little said, as Jopson tipped his face upwards with a finger under his chin.

Jopson frowned at the non-sequitur and glanced up from his task. “I don’t believe so, sir. Should I have?”

“She’s a witch who lives in Stromness.”

A look passed over Jopson’s face that Little might have taken as a judgement on his sanity, but he was too tired to do more than snort at the way Jopson’s steadily climbing eyebrows met the escaping lock of hair that he was becoming desperate to touch. 

“What I mean to say, of course, is that she’s a woman who peddles so-called cures and spells. She lives in a tumbledown shack up on a hill and she sells favourable winds to sailors. It’s absurd superstition that the Admiralty would never condone, but more than one well-respected captain has quietly sent a man up that hill to assuage his fears before leaving port.”

Jopson was nodding slowly, evidently waiting for him to explain how any of this was relevant or to stop talking so he could wield the razor without risk of lacerating him. 

“We stopped in Stromness for several days, but neither Sir John nor Captain Crozier sent a man up that hill,” Little continued. “I never would have expected them to, never would have believed it could make any difference, but...one starts to make connections between the most spurious pieces of evidence when things go wrong. The mind can convince itself of almost anything, if it wants to.”

“We didn’t go up that hill either,” Jopson said, his hand hot and firm under Little’s jaw as he grew impatient with waiting and held him still so he could begin to shave. 

Little waited for the blade to pass clear of his top lip before he said, “We did not.”

Silence stretched out between them, save for the quiet rasp of the razor, but there was a kind of shared understanding in it. A cold trickle of water ran down Little’s neck towards the hollow of his throat, and before he could reach up to swipe it away with his hand Jopson pressed a cloth to his skin, his fingers trailing against Little’s collarbone in a way that almost passed for accidental. Little swallowed heavily, looking up and finding Jopson’s face very close to his. Even with so little space between them Little still couldn’t find the right name for the colour of his eyes. The sense of deja-vu tugged at him again, and he wondered if perhaps they were the shade of some specific stretch of water he had sailed. From the way Jopson was looking back, Little wondered if he felt that familiarity as well.

Jopson tipped his head to one side, gliding the razor down his neck without a hint of hesitation as the sharp blade passed his jumping pulse. Not that Little was nervous; he recognised practised hands when he saw them.

“If you don’t mind my asking, sir, how did Captain Crozier seem when you saw him last? In himself, I mean.” For the first time Jopson looked unsure of his footing, avoiding Little’s gaze and maintaining his focus on his task.

“Well enough, I suppose. I didn’t get as much of a chance to know him as I would have liked.”

Jopson hummed, chewing on the inside of his lip for the briefest of moments before he tipped Little’s head the other way and began to speak again. “I don’t mean this to sound like gossip, sir, but I wrote to Captain Crozier shortly before he left England and his reply was less than comforting. There were implications between the lines, a lack of certainty on his part perhaps. It sounds like a bold presumption, I know, but I spent years by his side on that very same ship and I would dare say I know how to read his tone better than most. On that expedition south, we courted disaster more than once. Storms the like of which I hope never to sail through again; a near miss with an iceberg so close that we dashed into one another trying to avoid being driven under by the ice, tearing each other to ribbons so thoroughly that we barely had rudder and sail enough left to steer our way to safety. And through all of it Commander Crozier, as he was then, remained steadfast and calm. An anchor amongst the chaos. But in the aftermath he was...shaken by it. I don’t doubt that he could navigate his way out of whatever scrapes they encountered at this end of the world as well, but the weight of those decisions and responsibilities would be a burden even in the company of trusted friends. I don’t like to think of him bearing them alone.”

It was a lot to absorb, and Little didn’t know what to say. Evidently discomfited by his silence, Jopson turned away, busying his hands with cleaning the razor and tidying it away alongside the soap. “Apologies if I spoke out of turn, sir,” he said.

“No, it’s alright,” Little said. “I wish I could say more to put your mind at ease, but Captain Crozier seemed to me like a man it would take years to get to know. Two months at his command was no time at all.”

If Jopson was dissatisfied with his answer he did a creditable job of hiding it. Little debated saying more about the echoing fears that kept him up at night, the catastrophes his mind conjured from this place, but it wouldn’t be a kindness or a help. Real they might seem when he wandered the landscapes of his dreams, but he had ventured enough superstition for one day and he wouldn’t trouble Jopson with any more of his strange notions.

Finally unravelling the blanket enough to slip his arm out, Little reached for his tea, grimacing as the cold liquid hit his tongue. Jopson lifted the cup from his hand with a brush of warm fingers before he had even swallowed.

“Let me get you something fresh,” he said, gesturing towards the tidy pile of clean uniform and then slipping out of the door without another word.

Little shivered at the expanse of cool air that seemed to flood the space where Jopson had been. He was growing to prefer it, having two bodies in this tiny space instead of one. There was a thrill of danger to the thought, an undercurrent of something he didn’t quite dare to name, but if that warmth could fill his waking hours enough to balance out his frozen dreams then he would cling to it like a raft of hope.

He was halfway through buttoning up his waistcoat when Jopson reappeared, steam pouring from his cupped hands like a witch’s brew. The smell of coffee flooded the room and Jopson smiled widely as he passed the cup over. 

“I’ll warn you, I brewed it strong enough to stand an oar up in. I hope you’re not prone to the jitters. It should get you through the morning though.”

“What did I ever do without you?” Little said, closing his eyes as he breathed in the rich and bitter scent. 

“I aim to be indispensable,” Jopson quipped, and Little suspected there was more than a grain of truth to that. 

“If you don’t mind my saying so, sir, it might be worth speaking to Dr Robertson. He could mix you a sleeping draught within a minute and have you back to yourself in no time. We’ve a long way to go yet and I wouldn’t see you shaken by your burdens too.”

* * *

**_Thursday 9th November 1848 - 73°86’ N, 90°32’ W:_ **

**_‘The sun has set for the final time this year, disappearing below the horizon at just 12.24pm today. We shan’t see it again until February, a fact that makes the winter appear frightfully long from this vantage point. Nevertheless, the crew are in relatively good spirits, some minor ill health aside. Daily lessons in navigation, reading, writing, and arithmetic are progressing well, though it is fortunate that rigging reefing lines and caulking hulls does not require tidy penmanship and consistent spelling or we would all be in very dire straits.’_ **

*

As the long winter darkness settled over them in Port Leopold, Little finally crossed an invisible line and found Jopson waiting to meet him on the other side. 

The ships were settled some two hundred yards apart in the ice-locked bay, each with a magnetic observatory and a towering wall to connect them constructed out of the snow. Their expedition might have had little luck finding native people to speak to regarding their search, but as the temperature dropped by truly shocking degrees they dared to feel as though they had come to their own understanding of the character of this place and the best ways to appease it. Quite possibly the worst sort of hubris, but all too easy within the cosy confines of their ice-bound forts.

Under the black mid-afternoon sky, the captain’s cabin appeared almost as pokey and burrow-like as any other corner of the ship. Still, Little was glad of the easy access to the library. It would help the coming months to pass just that little bit more quickly.

“And the traps?” said Captain Ross, drawing Little’s gaze away from the warm leather spines he was idly cataloguing and imagining running his fingers over.

“No luck as yet,” he said, “but we’re checking them daily and the collars are ready to go.”

Whose idea it had been originally, Little couldn’t say, but he had to admit it was so madcap that it might just be ingenious. A handful of copper collars sat ready and waiting to be applied to any arctic foxes unlucky enough to wander into their traps, and inscribed on said collars were their current fixed position and the locations of various deposits of stores. The foxes would be released and with a great deal of luck, and by the grace of god, they might deliver help into the hands of their missing countrymen. Along with the barrels thrown overboard daily while they were still afloat, it was all they could do to widen their reach before they sent out sledge parties in the spring. 

“Alright, Lieutenant, thank you.”

“Sir.”

As Little stepped through the door into the corridor he almost ran headlong into Jopson, who was so focused on his hands as they fumbled to strip off his snow-dusted outerwear that he didn’t see Little until there was only half a foot between them.

“Oh! Apologies, sir,” he ground out, his jaw barely moving. 

Little didn’t know how long he’d been out in the cold, but evidently it was too long. “Are you alright?” he said.

Jopson jerked his head in a vague approximation of a nod. “I will be once I’ve warmed up a bit. I just need to report to the captain on  _ Investigator’s _ stores, if you’ll excuse me, sir.”

He slipped past Little, pulling his welsh wig off as he went and smoothing his hair down with one trembling, reddened hand. 

Little dithered in the corridor as Jopson disappeared into the captain’s cabin. He was due to give a lesson on navigation to twenty variously willing crewmen at six bells, but he had a suspicion that if left unprompted Jopson would rush back to his duties before taking the time to properly thaw himself out. The thought of any one of those elegant, fine-boned fingers turning black and being lopped off was enough to turn his stomach, and so Little waited and gathered what scant reserves of authority he possessed in preparation for an argument. 

Jopson almost ran into him again as he left the captain’s cabin, turning a boldly quizzical eye on Little where he stood barring the way. His jaw was still tightly clenched and the line of his shoulders taut, and Little was almost impressed by how successfully he was suppressing the shivers that were just visible at the corners of his mouth. 

“Come with me,” Little said, inflecting the statement with as much command as he could without outright making it an order.

“Sir? Captain Ross has asked me to begin an inventory of our expendable stores and-”

“It can wait.” 

Jopson opened his mouth to argue again, but Little continued, “Jopson, you’re frozen through. We need to warm you up before you do anything else.” 

Spreading his arms as though he were corralling a disagreeable animal, Little shepherded Jopson in the direction of his cabin. There was a level of calculation in his making Jopson lead the way: though they had been sharing the limited space of the ship for almost six months and Little could probably find his way round every nook and cranny with his eyes closed, he was overcome with a sudden shyness about admitting that he knew where Jopson slept every night. It was wildly illogical - Jopson had been inside his room at least twice daily since they left London - yet his stomach knotted up with the thought of crossing that metaphorical boundary. 

Jopson pushed the curtain aside with his shoulder when he reached the doorway, not bothering to hold it open for Little as he followed on. Those tiniest of cracks in Jopson’s impenetrable armour of politeness had become inexplicably dear to him, and he smothered a smile as he caught the curtain and ducked his head through the gap. 

“Take your damp things off while I fetch some warm water. I’ll not see you lose any fingers or toes to a stocktaking trip, of all things.”

Jopson grumbled something as Little left, but he chose to ignore it and wended his way down towards the galley. The cook was less than obliging - and really it must have been losing the sun that had put everyone aboard out of sorts - but it wasn’t more than a few minutes before Little was pushing his way back through Jopson’s curtain, the pleasantly warm bowl cradled in his arms like treasure. He set it on the desk, looking Jopson over as he did so. He was sitting motionless save for the shivering which had taken over the full length of both his arms and legs, as well as the jumping muscles in his clenched jaw. 

“Christ, man,” Little murmured, reaching over him to pull his neatly folded blanket free and draping it around him, tucking the ends in tightly. “Martyrdom does nobody any favours, you know, no matter what command might have you think.”

“It’s not martyrdom,” Jopson scoffed. “Sir.”

Little made a noise of disbelief, not bothering to hide his amusement at Jopson’s narrowed eyes, irritation practically dripping off him like melting ice. 

“You forget I’ve been in the polar regions before. An experience you do not share,” Jopson said.

“Then perhaps you’ve grown complacent. Show me your hands.”

Jopson sighed, put upon, but he slowly unfolded his arms from beneath the blanket and held his hands out for Little to inspect. There was a moment’s pause, just a fraction too long, when Little hesitated before closing the distance between them and taking Jopson’s fingers in his own. It should have been nothing, should have been a perfectly innocent gesture, but that pause dropped a lead weight in the air around them that was almost more than Little could bear. He cleared his throat, focusing on examining Jopson’s hands in the low light. They were less red than they had been, but the skin was still cold to the touch and they looked sore and tinged with frostnip. Nothing that wouldn’t heal, but a step too far in the direction of true injury for Little’s comfort. He tutted softly, letting Jopson’s hands fall back into the folds of the blanket on his lap.

“Well, doctor?” Jopson said.

“You’ll live. And your toes?”

_ “Sir.”  _

Little gestured impatiently at the snow-damp boots that were still on Jopson’s feet. 

“My fingers are too stiff to pull them off,” Jopson admitted.

Little tutted again, fussing with the blanket to buy himself a moment before he crouched down, unfastening Jopson’s boots and pulling them off. He set them neatly by the desk and wrapped his hands around the arches of Jopson’s feet, feeling the thick wool of his socks for dampness. Blessedly, they were dry, but they were as cold as Jopson’s hands, and so ignoring the vague noise of protest from above him he peeled them off and set them on the bed. 

“What were you even doing out there that took so long?” he asked, reaching for the bowl of water and setting it on the floor for Jopson to slide his feet into. 

“Requesting an inventory of  _ Investigator’s _ stores from Mr Hallindale, ready for the sledge trips come spring,” Jopson said slowly, as if spelling it out for a particularly dull crewman.

“And that necessitated you becoming one with the ice?” 

Little stood up again, finding his balance awkwardly in the tight space.

“The snow wall had partially collapsed in the wind. We had to clear the way and it delayed us on our way back. You know, I am capable of taking care of myself, sir.”

Jopson didn’t sound angry, but Little flushed with worry at the thought that he’d made a terrible error of judgement and overstepped an invisible line. Nevermind that as an officer he ought to have a duty of care towards every man on his crew. He made a mental note to keep his mollycoddling hands to himself before he overreached to an irreparable degree.

“Of course,” he said, leaning back against the wall behind him to give Jopson a fraction more space. “Apologies. I didn’t mean to condescend.”

Jopson stayed quiet for a long moment, watching his feet as he flexed his toes in the warm water, and then he shook his head and said, “I’m rather more used to caring for others than being cared for is all, Lieutenant.”

“I had noticed. It's a common burden we share, I think, caring about those men in Sir John’s expedition. Most of the crew are here for the money or the excitement of it all, but when you talk about Crozier you look the same way Captain Ross does.”

A small smile tugged at the corners of Jopson’s mouth and he nodded. He seemed genuinely touched by the comparison. 

“Why didn’t you go with him this time?” 

It was verging on prying, but Little had a feeling they’d reached the point where he could ask. Jopson didn’t bother to disguise his expression in response: a crease forming between his eyebrows, his lips pressing into a thin line, working through some internal debate at a rate of knots and settling, with a sigh, on speaking plainly.

“My mother was taken ill when the initial expedition was being formed. Not for the first time, and she’d encouraged me to take postings before despite it, but this time I decided to stay in London to look after her, rather than going north. I do wonder what might have happened if only the timings had been different. It’s like you said once, about those diverging paths where you made one choice instead of another, and you’ll never know for certain what would’ve happened if you went the other way. I feel that uncertainty compelling me now. Like a kind of guilt, I suppose. Perhaps it is making me incautious.”

“Do you regret it?”

“Staying behind? No. And yes. I had to choose who to take care of, and it might be that I made the choice that ultimately helped no one.”

Little couldn’t tell whether there was an invitation there to ask whether Jopson’s mother had recovered, but after so many boundaries pushed in such close succession he decided to err on the side of caution and let the ambiguous words hang in the air untouched.

“And what about for your own sake?” he said instead.

Jopson frowned. “What do you mean?”

Little looked him over, tucked up in his blanket with a rosy flush on his cheeks and the tip of his nose, but seemingly still unconcerned by his own discomfort. He appeared small from Little’s vantage point against the wall, and after a short deliberation he pushed off it and sat down beside him. 

“You’re really not making much of a case for your ability to prioritise your own wellbeing. I mean, does it bother you to know how close you came to disappearing off the face of the earth?”

Jopson bristled at that, leaning away so that he could fix Little with a steely look. “They haven’t disappeared, we just don’t know where they are. There is a distinction there, sir.” He paused. “Does it bother you?”

Little nodded. “Yes. When we were burning those watchfires and firing the guns I told you I was having trouble sleeping. I wasn’t entirely honest about why. The truth is, ever since I was shipped off home I’ve had the strangest dreams about this place. I would call them nightmares only the fear feels of a different sort. Less primal, perhaps; more lived in. It’s difficult to describe.”

Jopson was watching him with curiosity, those pale eyes searing into him, looking for the answers Little was struggling to articulate. 

“Are they always the same dreams?” he asked.

“No. There’s a kind of narrative to them, I suppose, though it rarely makes much sense. At first there was claustrophobia and cold, then came the dread, then those kinds of dreams where you’re running from something but your legs are like lead. After that I was just lost, too far off the edge of the map to ever be found. They seem to have tapered off with Dr Robertson’s concoction, thank god, but that feeling of being alone under an endless horizon is almost impossible to shake.” 

Jopson hummed, but seemed at a loss for what to say in reply. Which was entirely reasonable, Little thought. There was no generally accepted response to a superior officer casually detailing the contents of their semi-prophetic night time visions.

“I don’t suppose you’ve been having recurring dreams too?” he said to fill the silence.

“Not like those, sir,” Jopson said, a layer of something teasing in his tone.

He was fidgeting with the blanket in his lap and as Little watched the movement he realised he could feel the heat radiating off Jopson’s body down the entire length of his own. He was thoroughly thawed out then, and very, very close. Little fixed his gaze on the grain of the wood opposite, finding swirling faces and letters hidden in its patterns. Like eddies frozen in place. Like constellations. He wondered if Jopson saw the same ones in here too. 

Jopson gave one of his hands an experimental stretch against his thigh. At the sight of his long fingers splaying out wide, Little almost asked whether he had ever considered becoming a pianist, but he managed to stifle the question before it could escape.

“How are they feeling now?” he said instead, gesturing vaguely.

“Alright,” Jopson murmured. 

He disentangled his other hand from the blanket and held them both inches over Little’s lap. Despite his resolve not to touch him again, Little couldn’t resist the urge to reach out and take hold of them. Jopson said nothing as Little turned them over, looking for he knew not what but loath to give up this chance to map every line and freckle on his visible skin. 

“Still a tad cold,” he murmured.

“You’d make a good steward, you know,” Jopson said, watching Little squeeze his fingers gently. 

“The tragedy of a missed calling. I wonder what would be the quickest way to get myself disrated and reassigned?”

Little had never had much of a talent for humour, but Jopson’s laugh was genuine. He rubbed his thumbs over his palms, slipping them down towards the soft skin of his wrists where his pulse thrummed steadily. His own boldness shocked him, but Jopson didn’t pull away or give any indication that Little was taking a liberty he wasn’t happy to oblige. Still, the weight of rank stepped heavily onto Little’s conscience, and he opened his mouth ready to make some excuse before abruptly changing his mind when Jopson cupped his face, leaned sideways, and kissed him. 

The warmth radiating off his body was nothing compared to the heat of his mouth and a noise escaped Little that was born of abject desperation. Desperate to be closer, to have more, to convince himself that this was truly happening and not another in a long line of strange and surprising dreams. He sank his fingers into Jopson’s hair, tilting his head and drawing him in so tightly that he had to rest a hand on Little’s thigh to keep his balance. 

Between the press of Jopson’s tongue against his lips and the skittering jump of his own heart it was difficult for Little to catch his breath. He pulled back a fraction of an inch, sliding his thumb up and over Jopson’s slick lips just so he could keep touching them as he gasped for air. There had been moments when he’d wondered, daydreams he wouldn’t have admitted to under pain of death, but he had never truly imagined he could have Thomas Jopson licking his mouth open and murmuring soft sounds of encouragement into his skin. Jopson didn’t seem surprised in the slightest, trailing one cool hand down Little’s neck and dipping his fingers into the warm hollow beneath his collar.

The sound of the ship’s bell and the clatter of feet on a nearby ladder dragged them back to the present. They pulled away from one another, Little standing and stepping back to hover by the curtained doorway. In the winter darkness, every hour felt as though it was covered with the soft shroud of night, where all kinds of secrets could live, but it was a false sense of security. 

“That was unexpected,” Little breathed. 

“Was it, sir?” 

Little’s stomach flipped at the casual honorific, and he made a strangled sound. The very last thing he needed was to develop a reflexive response to that word. His working life would become some kind of hell. Jopson’s eyes were glittering with mischief, his lips flushed pink. His health was looking decidedly improved. 

“Perhaps you could call me Edward?” 

Jopson smiled. “Perhaps. If you would call me Thomas in return.”

* * *

**_Tuesday 15th May 1849 - 72°48’ N, 91°54’ W:_ **

**_‘Sledge parties have been arranged to cover more ground in our search. According to McClintock our window of opportunity rests between April and June, when the weather and light permits but the melt isn’t so extensive as to make the crossing of sea-ice treacherous. I will be leading a party as far south as Fury Beach. What we will find there only time will tell, but I must admit that after the confines of winter it is a boost to the psyche to feel engaged in our purpose once more.’_ **

*

It was the cairn at Fury Beach that immortalised their love for their lost friends and for each other. 

The sledge parties had begun in April, as early as the weather permitted. Captain Ross led the first and the furthest, hauling provisions to lay at depots across the breadth of Somerset island. His stoic enthusiasm was inspiring, but Little recognised the quiet desperation that underpinned it because he felt it too. Their winter had been as comfortable as was possible in the safety of their ships, but they were all painfully aware that it was only their first. Sir John and his men were four such winters deep into their expedition by now, and with every passing frozen month it grew harder to sustain any sense of hope. 

Some of the men had half convinced themselves that while they sat tight in the ice awaiting spring,  _ Erebus _ and  _ Terror  _ might have already navigated their way through the northwest maze the previous summer and found themselves free and easy down the pacific coast. It was a comforting notion, but Little could not find it in himself to be buoyed by it. The ice that had barred their way west still loomed large in his mind and, where once he had wished for an end to his frightening dreams, now their absence felt like an ominous sign. Still, Captain Ross planned to meet with John Rae in his overland search and they would know then whether any sign of them had been found.

Little had been tasked with scouring the eastern shore of Somerset Island as far as Fury Beach, restocking Parry’s stores there, if needed, and building a cairn to stand as testament to their presence, a beacon in the expanse. Captain Bird gave him leave to select his own party, and without an ounce of shame Little nominated Jopson amongst them. He was one of the few men on the combined crew who had polar experience, he reasoned, and with his fellow officers otherwise engaged and Captain Ross’s steward still on board, life on  _ Enterprise _ could run perfectly smoothly without him for a fortnight. The opportunity to share a tent with Jopson on their long miles was a consideration that he kept to himself.

They sighted the beach on the afternoon of their fifth day of hauling. Clumsy with exhaustion, his feet burning and blistered, Little had to take a moment to compose himself at the sight of Somerset House. It stood in a state of disrepair, its roof caving in and struts exposed like the ribs of a beached whale. A lonelier, more desolate sight he didn’t think he had ever seen, and the last flimsy tendrils of hope in his heart turned brittle and cold in its shade. Some small part of him had clung to the knowledge that men had been saved by this place before -  _ Mr Blanky _ had been saved by this place before - and perhaps it wasn’t so far fetched to imagine that they would crest that cliff and find tired, desperate, familiar faces waiting to greet them on the shingles. But it had been a foolish and hollow hope. He saw that now. 

Jopson stepped in close beside him, his shoulder nudging against Little’s as he caught his breath. Little sniffed, blinking hard and fussing with his gloves as he looked around. He needed his voice to be unwavering as he gave orders to the men and he wasn’t sure he could trust it just yet. He could feel Jopson watching him, and after a long moment he spoke, relieving Little of the obligation of finding his own words.

“Shall we set up the tents first, sir? And then perhaps check the state of the stores, if there’s still the light for it.”

Little nodded and cleared his throat. “Yes. And feed yourselves too. It’s been a long day. We’ll build the cairn tomorrow.” 

While the men set about making camp, Little walked a wide loop around the site. He was hardly an expert when it came to reading the land, but nothing here spoke to him of recent disturbance, not even by the native people. The door of the building was warped shut, the remains of boats on the shore were bleached and weathered smooth, and here and there amongst the snow lay outlines in stone of the places where tents had been pitched some fifteen years before. Lifeless impressions of men, echoes of the past reaching out to him like fingertip scrawlings on dew-damp glass. 

Trailing his hand along one sagging wall, he felt an overwhelming urge to lie down amongst the broken spectres of the beach. The intensity of it frightened him, and he withdrew his hand as though he’d been scalded. A keening cry drew his attention to the sky where a gull was wheeling out towards the sea. He wondered what it could see from its dizzying vantage point and what an augur might divine from its meandering course. Good fortune? A bad omen? Life or death?

Jopson appeared at his elbow once again, mirroring his upturned gaze. “The sea ice must be starting to melt. Summer’s coming,” he said.

Little huffed a soft laugh. Who needed superstition when you had a practical man at your side?

*

Darkness fell late in the day, and around them the wind began to howl. Secluded from the others, and from the world, Little drew his makeshift bed right alongside Jopson’s. In the warm lamp light Jopson smiled up at him, opening his arms to gather Little close. 

“Alright?” he murmured. 

Little insinuated one knee between Jopson’s legs, pressing up tighter against him. Over the long months of winter they had carved out little moments of tenderness. Lingering touches when Jopson came to his cabin at the bookends of the days, thinly veiled glances shared over the other officers’ heads at dinners, and kisses traded under the cover of dark. They were moments Little treasured, but there was a thrilling luxury to these nights spent in the tent, weary as they were. 

Jopson’s fingers threaded through his hair, smoothing it away from his face. There might be nothing more grounding in this world, Little thought, than the feeling of those capable hands against his skin. He sighed, trying to will away the dregs of that ever-present knot of fear behind his sternum. If he couldn’t shake it in this moment, camped out beneath the stars with the metronome of Jopson’s pulse against his ear, then he might finally have to make peace with its presence as a part of him. 

“Are you always this doleful?” Jopson said, smoothing the pad of his thumb up the crease between Little’s brows. 

Little was surprised into a laugh, looking up at him. He made an effort to relax the tension gathered around his eyes, but it was with limited success.

“Generally, yes.” 

He suspected that he wouldn’t look himself without at least the suggestion of a frown on his face, and if it would always lead to Jopson’s fingers tracing cool paths along his skin then he was disinclined to be without it. 

“When we arrived here it seemed like you were expecting more than what we found,” Jopson said. 

Little should have known his wobble wouldn’t pass without question. Jopson was too observant and too direct for that. He sighed, smoothing the palm of his hand down Jopson’s side, revelling in the warmth of his body. 

“I spent all winter discounting the men’s suggestion that Captain Crozier and the others might have beaten us out of the ice. There didn’t seem much harm in letting them believe it but I could not. Walking here though, knowing the history of this place, I started to wonder, even started to believe, that we wouldn’t be the first to arrive. I could see them clear as day in my mind’s eye, entrenched here in a home away from home; Crozier, Blanky, Hodgson and Irving, all the men, even the boys whose names I can’t recall. I ought to have been stricter with myself, but I wanted it too much to give it up. Somehow it came as a shock to find the beach empty.”

“Did you dream about them?” Jopson said.

“No. Though I’m glad of it. I wouldn’t want to start believing I’m some kind of oracle. Men have been committed for less.”

“There is something about this place,” Jopson reasoned, trailing his fingers up and down Little’s spine in a hypnotic rhythm. “It doesn’t quite feel like a part of the world we came from. Like there’s more to it than our eyes can see. I’m not prone to superstition, but it’s hard to dismiss it out of hand when we’re so near the edge of the unknown.”

Little hummed in agreement, but he was still reticent to give his most outlandish imaginings a voice. Selfishly, he needed Jopson to remain his voice of reason. 

“Walking away from the ships I felt like a flea on the world’s back,” he said. “I’ve never felt so impossibly small before, even when I’ve stood on deck with open water on every horizon.”

“At least, by that token, our cairn will look like a cathedral. There’ll be no missing it if any men do come by this way.”

There was something else Little had been considering, but he hadn’t yet found the right moment to ask. He shifted upwards so he could see Jopson’s face without craning his neck. “Tomorrow, once we’ve built it, I want you to write the note we put inside,” he said.

“Me? Why? I can’t sign it, I’m not an officer.”

“No, but you told me once that you wrote to Captain Crozier before he left. If he finds the note he’ll read my name, but he’ll recognise your writing and know that you came looking for him too.”

Jopson stared at him and then wordlessly he rolled them both over and kissed Little as though he had never wanted anything more in his life than to be here in this place, in this moment, with him. 

The wind was still howling outside, the canvas creaking and groaning like the lungs of some great beast, and under the roving heat of Jopson’s mouth Little felt brave. He tugged Jopson’s shirt out of his trousers, pushing it up and slipping his hands into the gap, watching in fascination as he shuddered at the sensation of blunt nails trailing down his sides. The hair on his chest was soft under Little’s fingertips and he wished that they were in some warm and balmy place so that he could strip the clothing from his skin, piece by piece, and press them flush against each other from head to toe. As Jopson kissed a damp line down his throat, Little tugged his own shirt up until it bunched beneath his arms, hooking his leg around Jopson’s thigh, his hands on the small of his back, pressing as much of their skin together as he could without letting in the chill. 

In the days they’d been walking there had been no reason to shave and already the dark stubble on Jopson’s chin was almost full enough to be called a beard. Little had half a mind to beg him to keep it once they returned to the ship. It was peppered with grey at the sharp corners of his jaw, a brand new secret that delighted Little every time he saw it, and he swept his thumbs over those places as he nudged Jopson’s mouth back up to his. 

“Tell me what you want,” Jopson breathed against his lips, his fingers twisting through the hairs at the nape of Little’s neck. 

What did he want? How to find the words for everything and anything Jopson wanted to give, and anything and everything he wanted given in return? Within the four walls of this tent, within the scope of what the universe was seeing fit to offer, Little already had everything he wanted right here in his arms.

“Please tell me.”

“This. You. I just want you.”

Little felt a curious awareness that he wasn’t embarrassed to say it out loud. So much of his life was filled with worry and self-censure and the idea that he didn’t know the answers people were looking for, but with Jopson lying so close that there was nothing he could hide he felt unshackled from his shame. 

Jopson kissed him softly, the rasp of his beard almost ticklish against Little’s lips. He slid his hand down between them, pressing his hand against the hard length of Little’s cock through the fabric of his trousers. Amongst all the strange impossibilities of this place, that he could find himself gasping under the eager attentions of a man this beautiful was perhaps the most incredible of all. It felt like a revelation, a blessing he couldn’t fathom deserving. The darkest, most selfish corner of his heart whispered thanks for the appalling misfortunes that had brought them together, and then buried the iniquitous prayer where it would never see the light of day. 

It had been so long since he’d felt anyone’s hand other than his own, Little was afraid he might come undone at just the promise of it, and so with a shaking breath he rolled Jopson onto his side and started working both their flies open. Jopson made a high noise in the back of his throat as Little pressed up against him and wrapped his fingers around them both. His breath was hot against Little’s lips, the sounds of the world fading away until all he could hear was their muffled gasps and groans and the velvet rasp of skin on skin.

Jopson’s knee hooked around the back of his leg, drawing him in, his hand joining Little’s in a tangle of fingers that might have been too clumsy if they weren’t both so starved of touch. In another place, with more rest and more guarantee of privacy, Little would have tried to prolong things, but here that was a luxury he felt they couldn’t afford. It wasn’t long before the sound of his name spilling out of Jopson’s mouth and the twist and flex of his fingers brought Little over the edge and Jopson along with him. Jopson pulled him into a long kiss, half missing his mouth at first with his head lolling heavy against the pillow. 

Little fumbled around over his head, reaching for what might have been a neckerchief and using it to clean them up. Jopson made a soft noise of disgust, wrinkling his nose. 

“I’ll have to clean that, you know,” he said, but the sleepy contentment laced through his voice undercut any real tone of rebuke.

“And I’m sure I’ll feel guilty in the morning.” 

Little flicked the cloth back over their heads and rearranged their clothes and the blankets around them. He tucked Jopson’s head under his chin, sighing as he curled into him and slipped warm hands back under Little’s shirt, fingers drawing swirling patterns against his skin. 

With the sound of the northern wild above him and the warmth of Jopson beside him, even with the work and worry yet to come, Little slept more soundly that night than he had in years. 

* * *

**_Sunday 28th October 1849 - 60°82’ N, 6°05’ W:_ **

**_‘Passed south of the Faroe Islands this morning. The mood on board is muted, but the promise of home raises spirits and strengths with every passing mile. I only wish we brought better news along with us.”_ **

*

As expected, the Edward Little who had set out from England some seventeen months before disappeared below the horizon with the last of the ice in their wake. There was a piece of him that had been promised to the north, it seemed, but he found that what he had been given in return made the parting a more gentle loss. 

Jopson stood with him at the bow as the scattershot islands of Orkney crept into view. In their long months together, Little had become quite adept at guessing what thoughts lay behind those often inscrutable expressions, but in that moment he wore them plain for anyone to see. The grief that Captain Ross had brought back from his conversation with the Eskimo had been the final hammer blow to their morale. They had made a hard but fruitless search as far as they could reach, and as they cut their way free of the ice at the barest suggestion of a summer thaw they knew to a man that they would not be waiting out another winter there. Rae would remain and search for more pieces of the puzzle, but it seemed they had the answer none of them had hoped to find.

Little’s buoyancy at the sight of home was balanced by the weight of his guilt. Guilt that he couldn’t do more, guilt at the enormity of his relief, and guilt that he could barely think of anything other than his future and Thomas Jopson’s place within it. 

The crew were busy at their backs and with a surreptitious glance over his shoulder Little dared to take a chance. “Thomas?”

It took Jopson a moment to realise he’d been spoken to, his mind most likely several thousand miles behind them. “Mm?” 

“When we’re back on dry land and free to do as we please, will you come and stay with me? For a while, at least.”

The hard set to Jopson’s face softened as he turned slightly to look at Little from the corner of his eye, and Little realised at long last that they were the colour of the North Sea where it foamed against the shore.

“I was hoping you’d ask,” was all he said.

Birds soared overhead, screaming their welcome to the sister ships heading for Fair Isle. Little breathed in deeply, imagining that he could feel the pull of home inside his bones like a compass pointing north. The reaching ice had finally relinquished him to softer hands and kinder dreams. Under the cool autumnal sun and the weight of what might have been, Little brushed his fingers against Jopson’s and made a silent promise to deserve his gentler fate.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> Can't believe I'm about to add sources to a fic, but here we are. I had [this](https://www.jstor.org/stable/1796737) jstor article open in my browser for like a month straight, and [this](https://www.jstor.org/stable/1799697) one was interesting too (from what I skimmed as I started to panic about finishing on time).
> 
> You can find me on tumblr [here](https://old-long-john.tumblr.com/). Feel free to come and chat about those frosty boys with me.


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